Top Netanyahu aide: Here’s proof Abbas deliberately destroyed peace talks

In letter to White House, EU and world ambassadors, PM’s national security chief presents ‘damning evidence’ of sabotage by Ramallah

BY YIFA YAAKOV May 7, 2014, 12:29 pm

NOTE: This is really interesting:

A letter reportedly sent by Israel’s national security chief to the White House, the EU and numerous ambassadors blames the Palestinians for the collapse of peace talks, and claims to include hard proof that PA officials were devising measures to thwart the process even before Israel refused to release a fourth round of Palestinian prisoners at the end of March.

n the April 22 letter, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s national security adviser, Yossi Cohen, revealed that chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat wrote a policy paper in March in preparation for a Palestinian rejection of American mediation efforts and Israeli overtures — nearly a month before Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas made a unilateral move to sign 15 international conventions, ostensibly in response to Israel’s refusal to honor its commitment to release the final round of prisoners,Haaretz reported Wednesday.

In fact, Cohen said, according to a copy of the latter published alongside the report (PDF here), Erekat had planned the maneuver weeks before Israel announced its refusal to release the prisoners — timing that, according to Cohen, demonstrates that the Palestinian leadership never intended to follow the peace talks through.

Cohen attached Erekat’s policy paper to his letter, copies of which were reportedly sent to his US counterpart Susan Rice, US Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro, all Israel-based EU ambassadors, and ambassadors from China, Russia and other countries. He appealed to the recipients to peruse the Erekat document and “draw conclusions” as to the Palestinians’ “bad faith” and responsibility for the failure of the latest round of peace talks.

Please CLICK HERE to keep reading

Read more: Top Netanyahu aide: Here's proof Abbas deliberately destroyed peace talks | The Times of Israel http://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-official-palestinians-purposely-stymied-talks/#ixzz315EJANZK
Follow us: @timesofisrael on Twitter | timesofisrael on Facebook

The Danger of Denial for Israel

Editorial forward.com May 2, 2014 

NOTE: Interesting piece, and as always, interesing discussion in the comments section. 

We are not, of course, John Kerry. We have not, in the past nine months, met 34 times with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and reportedly twice that many times with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, staking so much personal energy to achieve the two-state solution that these men say they want but are unwilling to grasp.

Since we are journalists and not diplomats, we won’t get into trouble for speaking the truth, which is that Israel does risk becoming an anti-democratic state where a minority rules the majority unless the occupation ends. We won’t utter the A-word — Israeli politicians are allowed to, but it’s unwise and inflammatory for anyone else, especially if you are secretary of state, even if you thought you were speaking in a private, off-the-record conversation.

We are, instead, Americans who care deeply about ensuring a secure, Jewish and democratic Israel, and about finding a way to satisfy the legitimate national aspirations of the Palestinians. From this perspective, half a world away, it looks like Netanyahu and Abbas are in a dangerous state of denial.
Politics in America, in Washington especially, hardly provides a model for finding common ground, but it is far enough from Jerusalem and Ramallah to see what those leaders cannot or will not acknowledge. We may be wrong on this. We rather hope so. But the view from here is that the situation there is not likely to get better, or easier, or more advantageous to one side or another anytime soon.
Israel’s continued occupation of roughly 2.5 million Palestinians in the West Bank will corrode its soul and destroy its democracy, diminish its international standing and hasten the alienation that too many American Jews already feel. Palestinians’ continued refusal to accept the reality of Israel as a predominantly Jewish state will prevent them from establishing their own independent nation. Israel is in the neighborhood for good. Boundaries can be adjusted, compensation for lost property arranged, but the central fact of Israel’s existence is by now immovable. Get used to it.

That’s what it looks like from here, anyhow.

We recognize that, thanks to the separation barrier, a thriving economy and security cooperation with the Palestinian Authority (though who knows how long that will last), most Israelis outside the military don’t have to deal with Palestinians. Even those Jews living among them in the West Bank can travel on separate roads to gated communities. The occupation is largely invisible. It can be easily denied.
Denial is pervasive on the Palestinian side of the Green Line as well. Did Abbas really think he was helping his people by lobbing a grenade into Kerry’s gasping negotiations to try — again — to reach a rapprochement with Hamas? All he did was give Netanyahu the escape route he was waiting for and further postpone an end to his people’s suffering.

The refusal to come to grips with the dangerous, slow-burning reality in the Middle East reminds us of how Americans deny the stark effects of climate change and the human role in furthering environmental degradation. We shrug off dramatic shifts in temperature and the destruction caused by extreme storms, and lull ourselves into thinking that a hybrid car here, a bit of recycling there, is all we need.
The scientists who are trained to see and understand the larger landscape, however, are ringing alarm bells so loud that we have to be deaf to ignore them. In much the same way, John Kerry was calling upon Israeli and Palestinian leaders to see past the denial of convenience and the denial of desperation to a path that could change history. We are not him, of course.

Which is why we can be grateful that he tried. LINK


Read more: http://forward.com/articles/197478/the-danger-of-denial-for-israel/#ixzz30ftDzLFe

Another tack: It’s a rotten line

in the Jerusalem Post by Sarah Honig May 1, 2014

Lord Caradon: ‘I know the 1967 line, and it’s a rotten line. you couldn’t have a worse line for a permanent international boundary.’

NOTE: Excellent article with key points. Bookmark this one and use in your debates. 

On the eve of our Independence Day, an ultra-antagonistic independence – one that manifestly threatens to replace ours – is fast gaining ground. Many Israelis are appalled to see the Ramallah and Gaza splinters officially welcomed in UN-affiliated forums as the “State of Palestine.” However, given relentless global trends, this travesty was all but inevitable.

“Palestinian independence” had already been declared in Algiers on November 15, 1988, and within mere months the utterly fictional entity was recognized by 134 of the UN’s 193 then-members. All this took place before Oslo proved how a previously bad situation could be made disastrously worse.

By now, of course, few abroad challenge the popular axiom that a Palestinian state had existed in this country from time immemorial and that it was cruelly overrun in an act of unprovoked aggression by Israel on June 5, 1967.

Even since, it’s alleged, the state of Palestine had been under occupation.

In other words, Israel had violently extinguished Palestine’s flourishing sovereignty. This is today’s self-evident, universally worshiped gospel. No substantiation thereof is necessary and any deviation therefrom is sacrilege.

In fact, the truth is remarkably unwanted in this context lest it expose the entire fable as fake. No one wants to know that there never- ever was a Palestinian state – not in the entire annals of mankind. There are advantages to deception, especially when it yields realpolitik perks.

Thus the dysfunctional family of nations is more than happy to clasp to its selectively loving bosom another fabricated Arab addition.

The corollary to the much-censured Israeli conquest of an independent Palestine is that independent Palestine had thrived in all the territory that Israel took after June 4, 1967. The demand that Israel retreat to the June 4 lines is, consequently, endowed with moral authority.

Each time the Ramallah honchos and their jihadist partners in Gaza repeat the 1967-borders mantra, it packs greater punch. It matters little to cynical propagandists, sanctimonious fellow travelers, gullible do-gooders and know-nothing dupes that there never were 1967 borders (but only 1949 armistice lines, which don’t remotely resemble fixed borders).

The current bogus standard for elementary justice is that these 1967 borders (that never-were) must form the basis for any deal between Israel and the callously conquered Palestinian state (that never was).

This is the bedrock dictum. Zealous enforcers and sanctifiers of dogmas suffer no skepticism. Whatever they promote as incontrovertible principles must be accepted as incontrovertibly unassailable. Whatever serves their interests and/or belief system cannot be challenged – otherwise it might undermine the paradigm of whatever they present as an absolute.

And so we’re left with an assertion that a preexisting Palestinian state is oppressed by Israel and that to redress this injustice Israel must withdraw to the June 4, 1967, lines. This, we’re told, has been the position of the whole international community from the outset and this position had already been enshrined in UN Security Council Resolution 242 (adopted unanimously on November 22, 1967).

That resolution was hardly Israel- friendly. It began by laying down a rule that applied exclusively to the Jewish state. That rule determined that “acquisition of territory by war is inadmissible.” All other acquisitions of territory by war were expectedly overlooked. Just as expectedly, the UN also overlooked the fact that east Jerusalem, for example, had been under Arab rule solely because it was acquired in 1948 by an act of war launched to thwart UN Resolution 181 (the Partition Resolution of 1947).

Likewise, there was the minor matter that Israel was defending itself in 1967 against the coordinated and hoarsely broadcast belligerence of all its Arab neighbors who unabashedly vowed to annihilate it.

For weeks, the intention to destroy Israel was proclaimed vehemently and vociferously, but the international community wasn’t overly perturbed by the prospect of extinguishing Jewish independence. Indeed the UN shamefully pulled out its peacekeeping forces from Sinai to facilitate an Egyptian attack.

Nonetheless, all that appeared to pale before 242’s demand that Israel withdraw “from territories occupied in the recent conflict.” This was seized upon by the Arab world, its many accomplices and cheerleaders to unequivocally mean a full return to Square One. Israel had to plainly hand over all it gained in a classic war of self-defense.

This became one of the most blatant (and successful) distortions ever, even when judged by the distorters’ dishonorable record.  Please CLICK HERE to keep reading

Politics trumps peace process

by Tony Badran in NOW at now.mmedia.me

In a move that surprised many in Washington, last Wednesday, Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah movement and its Islamist rival Hamas announced that they had reached an agreement to reconcile and end their seven-year rift. American commentators overwhelmingly approached the news from the angle of its impact on the already faltering US-sponsored peace talks. Unsurprisingly, Abbas's move drew furious reactions from American and Israeli officials. 

What possibly could Abbas be thinking? According to some analysts, the Palestinian leader's motivation was to put pressure on the US and Israel in order to extract concessions in the negotiations. However, the Americans and the Israelis were hardly the first thing on Abbas's mind. Instead, his eye was on something much closer to home, inside Fatah. Namely, Abbas is concerned with heading off the challenge from former Gaza security chief Muhammad Dahlan. But since the Palestinian arena is subordinate to wider Arab politics, Abbas's maneuver also needs to be viewed against the backdrop of Arab dynamics and the efforts of Arab states to project power onto the Palestinian arena. The central Arab player in this sphere is Egypt, in alliance with Dahlan’s other patron, the United Arab Emirates, with Qatar the principal actor on the other side of the divide. Cairo, which has been squeezing Hamas, also seems unimpressed with Abbas and is looking for an alternative to the 79-year-old Palestinian president. 

Against this backdrop, the Palestinian players and their respective Arab backers have been maneuvering for months, leading to the current convergence between Abbas and Hamas. For their part, Egypt and the UAE want to reintroduce Dahlan into Gaza and back into Fatah, and they're helping him build up his ability to reconstitute his influence.    Please CLICK HERE to keep reading

A full day session criticizing UNRWA - at the UN!

from Elder of Zyon May 2, 2014
The The American Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists (AAJLJ) and the International Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists (IAJLJ) will be presenting a most interesting program at the UN on May 19th called "UNRWA - Providing Humanitarian Relief or Prolonging the Palestinian Refugee Problem?"

I know that the IAJLJ is an accredited UN NGO, which is probably how they were able to get space at the UN itself.

Here's the description (received via email):

According to its charter, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) is a humanitarian group helping Palestinian refugees. In reality, it has become an obstacle to Palestinian-Israeli peace by engaging in incitement and holding Palestinians back from rebuilding their lives.

While some have suggested that UNRWA be abolished, we believe it is not UNRWA's existence but rather how it executes its mandate that is the root of the problem. UNRWA has broken all the rules that are supposed to govern humanitarian enterprises. Consequently, UNRWA is the exact opposite of other refugee relief operations. While other relief operations seek to resettle refugees; UNRWA is dedicated to blocking resettlement. While other relief operations limit the definition of "refugee" to individuals who flee their homeland; UNRWA uniquely inflates the number of Palestinian refugees by defining all descendants of the original refugees of 1948-1949 as "refugees." While all other relief operations help refugees live normal lives so that they can move on with their existence; UNRWA ensures the refugees' lives remain abnormal so that the refugees will be filled with anger and a thirst for revenge that inspires violence and can only be quenched by a victorious return. While relief organizations try to create stable conditions for refugees; UNRWA enables radical political activity and indoctrination by armed groups which ensure a continual state of near chaos.

People often wonder why violence and instability persist and why the Arab-Israeli conflict is so seemingly impossible to resolve. An important part of the answer is that UNRWA perpetuates the problem. UNRWA has kept Palestinian refugees in suspended animation and at low living standards. Their suffering and anger is maintained as a weapon to encourage them toward violence and intransigence.

The United Nations General Assembly established UNRWA in 1949. It is highly unlikely, however, that the General Assembly would support any meaningful reform of the agency without a tremendous amount of persuasion and pressure. But there are important and common sense changes to UNRWA that can be effectuated outside the General Assembly.

During the past year, the International Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists (IAJLJ) met in Israel with the Ambassadors and staff of donor countries that support UNRWA. At these meetings, the IAJLJ provided the government officials with a letter describing the problems associated with UNRWA's activities. During these discussions, the IAJLJ questioned whether UNRWA, established over 60 years ago, is fulfilling its mission or failing in its mission. Facts on the ground demonstrate the need for substantial change in the way UNRWA is handling the Palestinian refugee crisis.

The IAJLJ and the American Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists (AAJLJ) have organized as a side event at the United Nations headquarters in New York, a symposium focusing on UNRWA. The event will be held on May 19, 2014, and will gather representatives from the United States and other donor countries to discuss and confront these difficult issues, and to develop ideas to address these challenges.

Speakers include Ambassador Ron Prosor, Prof. Alexander H. Joffe, Prof. Asaf Romirowsky, Dr. Einat Wilf and James M. Lindsay.

It will be livestreamed over the UN's WebTV channel.   LINK

Why Abbas Reconciled With Hamas

from the NY Times May 1, 2014 OP ED by Ali Jarbawi

NOTE: Amazing how we can all look at the same situation and have such disparate viewpoints. I wonder what the REAL truth, if any, is? 

RAMALLAH, West Bank — A week before the deadline expired on the stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace talks sponsored by John Kerry, the Palestinian factions Fatah and Hamas announced an end to their seven-year split. The announcement paved the way for the formation of a Palestinian unity government in the coming weeks, with elections following at least six months later.

The unity deal was greeted in Palestinian circles with a mixture of joyous relief and caution. The split has proved harmful to Palestinians, and has increased their collective suffering over the past seven years. It has also distracted them from major issues like ending the Israeli occupation and establishing an independent state. Indeed, for seven years, ordinary Palestinians have demanded that the two factions reconcile.

Despite the optimism, there is a pervasive fear that this latest deal will be reconciliation in name only. After all, the latest announcement doesn’t contain anything new; it merely declares that earlier agreements will be upheld. This has led many to wonder: Why now? Is this latest agreement more serious than earlier ones? Does it signal a change in strategy on both sides? Or is it merely a necessary tactical step whose effects will soon fade away?

Please CLICK HERE to keep reading

Opinion: International Community Criminally Negligent on Terror Against Israel

This article was first published by The Gatestone Institute. Author Richard Kemp spent most of his 30-year career in the British Army fighting terrorism and insurgency and was involved in the direction of national policy at the highest level.

British terrorism expert Col. Richard Kemp blames the international community for tolerating endless rocket attacks against Israeli civilians.

There is the criminal failure of the international community, as both accomplice and accessory before the fact, to make any meaningful effort to prevent endless salvoes of terrorist rocket attacks against Israeli civilians for over nine years.

As we saw with the Iranian arms shipment aboard the Klos-C last month, Iran’s sponsorship of terrorism continues unabated — even as the international community is rehabilitating its extremist regime.

Three hundred and thirty two drone attacks against Al Qaida and Taliban targets on Pakistani territory since 2005 demonstrate U.S. President Barack Obama’s strong resolve against terrorists that threaten the United States. Only last week, the latest wave of air strikes launched or enabled by his government against Al Qaida networks in Yemen killed 55 suspected extremists, possibly including master bomb-maker Ibrahim al-Asiri.

Of course no one expects the U.S. to send drones in reply to the news that thePalestinian Authority [PA], upon which he has lavished billions of dollars and thousands of hours of diplomacy, was going into business with Hamas, which the United States has branded a terrorist organization.

EU Response to Fatah-Hamas Deal ‘Treacherous’

But one could hope for something more forceful from Washington than State Department spokesman Jen Psaki’s weak and vacillating response in which she attempted to take the heat off Hamas and the PA by taking a gratuitous dig at Israel. “There have been unhelpful steps from both sides throughout this process,” she said.

If the US response was feeble, the EU’s was treacherous.

Like America and several other countries, the EU designates Hamas as a terrorist organization. Yet the spokesman for Catherine Ashton, EU foreign affairs head, actually welcomed the proposal to bring Hamas into the PA.

Though shameful, this is far from surprising. It is part of a lengthy pattern of witting or unwitting EU encouragement of Middle Eastern terrorism.

The EU has contributed its taxpayers’ money to paying the salaries of convicted Palestinian terrorists via unconditional donations to the PA amounting to billions of dollars since 1994. Some of this money has also been spent on school textbooks, television programs and other PA propaganda that incite hatred and terrorism against Israel.

Ashton and the EU have called repeatedly for an end to the Israeli-Egyptian security operation on land and sea around Gaza. The operation is designed to prevent predominantly Iranian-supplied munitions and materiel for terrorism from entering the Gaza Strip, and to stop Gaza terrorists and weapons moving to attack Israeli or Egyptian targets.  Please CLICK HERE to keep reading

Abbas to announce his Hamas-backed government will recognize Israel

BY AVI ISSACHAROFF April 25, 2014, 8:37 pm

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas will on Saturday formally present the political platform of his anticipated new

government, in the wake of his Fatah faction’s unity pact with Hamas, a Palestinian official told The Times of Israel on Friday.  

The official, who asked not to be named, said Abbas would tell the PLO’s Central Committee that the new government — scheduled to be established within the next five weeks — would recognize Israel and accept previous Israeli-Palestinian agreements. The government would also be committed to a two-state solution, with an independent Palestine alongside Israel.

The new government would also support continued negotiations with Israel in order to achieve the two-state solution, the official said.

Abbas, in his address, will stress that the new government will be comprised of technocrats rather than politicians, the official said. There will be no Fatah or Hamas representatives in the government, he added.

The official expressed criticism of Israel’s bitter response to the unity pact. The PA’s support for Fatah-Hamas reconciliation, he said, was designed to boost peace efforts, not to cause their collapse. “We knew in advance that Hamas would agree to the conditions that we and the Egyptians had put to them,” he said, “to the effect that the new government would be headed by Abu Mazen [Abbas] and would operate according to his directives, and that an agreed date would be fixed for Palestinian elections.”

The economic sanctions that Israel said Thursday it would impose on the PA — including the use of taxes collected by Israel on the PA’s behalf to offset PA debts to Israel — were likely to lead to the weakening of the PA’s security apparatus, he also said.

Read more: Abbas to announce his Hamas-backed government will recognize Israel | The Times of Israel http://www.timesofisrael.com/abbas-to-announce-his-hamas-backed-government-will-recognize-israel/#ixzz2zvW0YXss
Follow us: @timesofisrael on Twitter | timesofisrael on Facebook

Netanyahu blames Palestinians for collapsing peace talks

By William Booth, Sunday, April 6, 10:03 AM Washington Post

JERUSALEM — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu broke his silence on the collapsing peace talks Sunday by blaming Palestinian leaders for the current crisis and threatening retaliatory steps to punish the Palestinians.

In remarks at his weekly cabinet meeting, Netanyahu said that just as the parties were nearing an agreement last week to extend the U.S.-brokered negotiations through the end of 2014, the Palestinian leaders announced their decision to sign on to 15 treaties and conventions under the auspices of the United Nations. 

“The Palestinians’ threats to appeal to the U.N. will not affect us. The Palestinians have much to lose by this unilateral move,” Netanyahu said. “These will only push a peace agreement farther away, and unilateral steps on their part will be met with unilateral steps on our part.”

Israel’s retaliatory measures could include withholding transfers of millions of dollars in taxes and fees that Israel collects on behalf of the Palestinian Authority.

The Palestinians say that it is Israel that has pushed the talks toward collapse.

To restart the peace process, Netanyahu promised in July to release 104 long-serving Palestinians prisoners, many convicted of murdering Israelis, and in return the Palestinians agreed not to seek greater recognition as a state from the United Nations.

The Israelis released three groups, a total of 78 prisoners, but balked last week at freeing the last batch of 26 inmates.  CLICK TO KEEP READING

Kerry-Abbas Visit Canceled as Mideast Talks Falter

NY Times April 1, 2014

NOTE: VERY sad. Once again. 


Tuesday night, after President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority defied the United States and Israel by taking concrete steps to join 15 international agencies — a move to gain the benefits of statehood outside the negotiations process.

The move, which appeared to catch American and Israeli officials by surprise, prompted Secretary of State John Kerry to cancel a planned return to the region on Wednesday, in which he had expected to complete an agreement extending negotiations through 2015.

In that emerging deal, the United States would release an American convicted of spying for Israel more than 25 years ago, while Israel would free hundreds of Palestinian prisoners and slow down construction of Jewish settlements in the West Bank. 

Mr. Abbas, who had vowed not to seek membership in international bodies until the April 29 expiration of the talks that Mr. Kerry started last summer, said he was taking this course because Israel had failed to release a fourth batch of long-serving Palestinian prisoners by the end of March, as promised.
Israeli officials say they are not bound by their pledge because no meaningful negotiations had taken place since November.

American officials, while rattled, said the Palestinians appeared to be using leverage against Israel rather than trying to scuttle the negotiations. Mr. Abbas, they noted, did not move toward joining the International Criminal Court, a step Israel fears most because the Palestinians could use the court to contest Israel’s presence in the West Bank.

Still, a senior American official said Mr. Kerry’s decision not to return to the region immediately reflected a growing impatience in the White House, which believes his mediating efforts have reached their limit and that the two sides need to work their way out of the current impasse.

In announcing the moves, Mr. Abbas said, “This is our right.” He has been under pressure from other Palestinian leaders and the public to leverage the nonmember observer-state status they won at the United Nations in 2012 to join a total of 63 international bodies. “We do not want to use this right against anybody or to confront anybody,” he said, as he signed the membership applications live on Palestinian television. “We don’t want to collide with the U.S. administration. We want a good relationship with Washington because it helped us and exerted huge efforts. But because we did not find ways for a solution, this becomes our right.” The United States voted against the Palestinians’ 2012 bid in the United Nations General Assembly, and it blocked a similar effort in 2011 at the Security Council, arguing that negotiations with Israel were the only path to peace and statehood.  CONTINUE READING HERE

The Hard Truth of Peace

Mar 27, 2014

By: Brett Krasner, Columbia University, Hasbara Fellow '14 from Hasbara Fellowships (hasbarafellowships.org)

NOTE: Another educated, thoughtful student. We're kvel'n! 

The peace talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority are very close to failing. The nine-month talks, which are set to expire in April, have not yet created any major agreements between either of the sides. In order to extend negotiations, the Palestinian Authority (PA) demands that Israel freeze settlement building and release the final batch of prisoners (many of them convicted terrorists) that Israel initially agreed to release. The Israeli government is wary of releasing these prisoners if the talks are not guaranteed to be fruitful. What should be done? Israel should play along and release the prisoners and freeze settlement building outside of the major settlement blocks. In the worst-case scenario of the talks eventually breaking down, it would allow Israel to deflect accusations of intransigence onto the PA. In the best-case scenario, it could lead to a continuation of negotiations that have a chance of succeeding. The negotiations themselves matter because if they fail, Israel will be burdened with international isolation and delegitimization, economic boycotts, and destabilization in the West Bank.  Such a disaster is unneeded especially when Israel needs all the help that it can get with battling the Iranian nuclear program and other serious threats.

Between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, there are approximately twelve million residents. In this population, there are approximately 5.9 million Arabs and 6.1 million Jews. Of the Arabs residing in the area, 2.57 million live in the West Bank, 1.66 million live in Gaza, and 1.68 million live in the State of Israel.  CLICK HERE TO KEEP READING

Opinions: A Response to Evan Goldstein’s Reflection on AIPAC

By: Michael Woodbury, Hasbara Fellow, Boston College written March 17, 2014
in Hasbarafellowships.org 

Note: another great piece to put up on the fridge, filled with crisp, factual talking points. Keep this one handy. And there's nothing like reading from or talking to a really smart and well spoken student. Makes us all stand up a little straighter. 

Author’s note: I too spent the first weekend of spring break in Washington DC for the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) 2014 Policy Conference.  Below is my reflection on, and response to, the atrocious article by Evan Goldstein published on March 10, 2014 under the title: “Opinions: A Reflection on the AIPAC Policy Conference.”  The content is my own, and does not reflect the opinions of The Gavel or any organizations with which I am affiliated.

When I returned from the AIPAC 2014 Policy Conference, I was both excited and suspicious upon learning that at least one Boston College student also attended the conference, unbeknownst to me. Last night, my suspicions proved legitimate when The Gavel published Evan Goldstein’s reflections on the conference. The article had a strong, accurate introductory sentence, but then immediately plummeted into the abyss of anti-Zionist arguments, never to return.

Indeed, the Arab-Israeli/Israeli-Palestinian Conflict is incredibly complicated, and as such neither ‘side’ is entirely free from criticism. That being said, it is illogical and even reprehensible to claim that AIPAC is obliged to foster the growth of sentiment that demonizes Israel, meanwhile ignoring the efforts of other lobbying organizations. Think about this: do you expect AIPAC to host a blatantly anti-Israel speaker, thus supporting the circulation of his/her message?

Goldstein claims that AIPAC’s efforts impede peace without mentioning government-sponsored incitement against Israel and the Jewish people that is ever-present within the Palestinian Authority. Naturally, there are Palestinians who hope for a fair and peaceful resolution to the Conflict, but their numbers are quickly diminishing due to incitement in their children’s schoolbooks and media. If you wish to learn more on this specific issue, please consider attending Eagles For Israel’s event, ‘Incitement: An Obstacle to Peace’ next Tuesday, March 18^th at 7:00 PM in Gasson Hall Room 202.

Contrary to Goldstein’s claims, Israel’s construction of housing within Judea and Samaria (the ‘West Bank’) is not illegal, nor is it done within a ‘sovereign land of the Palestinians.’ Judea and Samaria encompasses locations with the most ancient Jewish connections to the region, where stories from the Old Testament are believed to have transpired. In recent history, J&S passed from control by the Ottoman Turks to the British Mandate for Palestine in 1917, transitioning to Jordanian control from ’48 until ’67 when the Israeli military removed Jordanian authorities from the area in the defensive 1967 Six-Day War. Jordan forfeited claim to J&S under the terms of the 1994 Israel-Jordan Peace Treaty. Judea and Samaria to this day has never been part of a sovereign nation, nor has a sovereign nation of Palestine ever been internationally recognized in this land or elsewhere.

These facts aside, I am not saying that Israel’s construction of housing within Judea and Samaria is a great decision. But, in order to pass judgment on the situation, one must understand the history of the land, and the facts about this construction. Jewish housing areas comprise less than 3% of the land in Judea and Samaria. Most of the construction highlighted by the media is actually taking place within the confines of ‘settlements’ that have existed for years. These areas can hardly be described as settlements anymore than American towns and small cities could.

Goldstein continues, mentioning “the displacement of Palestinians by Israeli paramilitary groups in 1948,’ ignoring the calls by Arab leaders for the complete evacuation of Arabs from the lands of the former British Mandate. These leaders anticipated a quick and decisive victory of the five-plus-nation invasion of Israel, allowing these Arabs to return to the land now Judenrein.

Next, Goldstein asserts a “legitimate claim to a right of return for Palestinian refugees,’ without any discussion of the complications of the question of Palestinian refugees. He ignores the unique classification of Palestinian refugees by the United Nations under the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). A Palestinian’s refugee status lasts despite gaining citizenship to another nation and passes down to all descendants for several generations. As a result, the estimated 650,000 original Palestinian Refugees now amount to over 5,000,000. All other factors aside, how can you expect a nation whose population is just under 8,000,000 to accommodate for an additional five million people? Finally, Goldstein ignores the 700,000 Jewish refugees from Arab nations after the founding of the State of Israel. CLICK THIS TO KEEP READING

Turning on the 'Jewish state'

There'll be no peace if the Palestinians don’t contribute their share; but they won't contribute their share unless people who want peace insist they contribute it.

By Ari Shavit | Mar. 20, 2014 | 6:00 AM |  14 from Ha aretz  (haaretz.com)

In Washington, New York and even Tel Aviv, an overall offensive is being waged on the Jewish people’s national state. American and Israeli peace seekers are furiously attacking the demand to recognize Israel as a Jewish state.

Suddenly not only the settlements are a war crime, but also the Jewish people’s demand to recognize its right to self-definition. Suddenly Zionism’s fundamental idea, which was recognized in the Balfour Declaration, the UN’s partition resolution and the Israeli Declaration of Independence, is not legitimate.

The thought that alongside the Palestinian (non-democratic) nation-state there will be a (democratic) Jewish nation-state makes many good people fly off the handle. People who are usually committed to equality are not ready to grant the Jews what they firmly demand for the Palestinians. People who want peace are rejecting out of hand the threshold demand of peace – real mutual recognition.

More than enough has been said about the essence of the matter. It’s a conflict of mutual blindness. We didn’t recognize the existence of a Palestinian people entitled to its own sovereign state and the Palestinians didn’t recognize the existence of a Jewish people entitled to its own sovereign state. It’s clear, therefore, that the end of the conflict must entail an end to the blindness. It must involve each side’s recognition of the other, whose existence and rights it has ignored for the past 100 years or so.  CLICK TO KEEP READING

Obama’s Middle East fallacy

By Jackson Diehl, Sunday, March 16, 7:52 PM E-mail the writer

Washington Post March 16, 2014 

Two weeks ago President Obama took time off from the crisis in Ukraine to pursue the foreign policy cause that, together with nuclear disarmament, has been closest to his heart: Israeli-Palestinian peace. Having invited Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the White House, Obama welcomed him by publicly declaring to Bloomberg View’s Jeffrey Goldberg that Israel “could face a bleak future — one of international isolation and demographic disaster — if [Netanyahu] refuses to endorse a U.S. drafted framework agreement for peace,” as Goldberg summed it up.

Fair enough, you might say: An April 29 deadline for obtaining agreement to the framework is getting close, so it’s time for a little presidential arm-twisting. It follows that when Mahmoud Abbas troops into the Oval Office for his meeting on Monday, he should be met with equally dire predictions of Palestinian doom if he fails to accept the framework. KEEP READING

NOTE: Do you agree? Too harsh? What really goes on in these meetings???

Mahmoud Abbas and the 'Jewish State'

by Robert Satloff

Also available in العربية

Foreign Policy

March 14, 2014

From The Washington Institute for Near East Policy 

NOTE: Another excellent and thoughtful piece by the brilliant Robert Satloff

"To his credit, Obama has understood the centrality of the "Jewish state" issue. Despite the pressure he has exerted on Israel to stop building in Jerusalem, release jailed terrorists, or make painful concessions in peace talks, the president has never wavered from his characterization of "the Jewish state of Israel."

Read the Article Here

Aide says no concessions as Abbas set to meet Kerry, Obama

From the TIMES OF ISRAEL

Fatah organizes West Bank solidarity rallies for PA president; Arab world largely focused on Syria

BY ELHANAN MILLER March 16, 2014, 4:31 pm

NOTE: REALLY? 

“The Palestinians have delivered all the concessions they can,” Fatah Central Committee member Mohammed Al-Madani, Abbas’s liaison with Israel and the Jewish community, told The Times of Israel on Sunday. “Now it’s Israel’s turn to deliver,” Madani said.

Read more: Aide says no concessions as Abbas set to meet Kerry, Obama | The Times of Israel http://www.timesofisrael.com/aide-says-no-concessions-as-abbas-set-to-meet-kerry-obama/#ixzz2w8kiCxXF 
Follow us: @timesofisrael on Twitter | timesofisrael on Facebook

Eight Crucial Questions for Abbas (and One for President Obama)

by John Ryan
March 15, 2014 at 2:30 pm

from:

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4216/obama-abbas-meeting

1. Does Israel have a right to exist?
2. Yasser Arafat, the first president of the Palestinian Authority [PA], accepted Israel as a Jewish state, and the homeland of the Jewish people. As the recent UNESCO exhibit documented, Jews have been on Israeli land, and in the disputed areas in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) for 3,500 years, 2,000 years prior to the advent of Islam. You, however, recently said that you do not accept Israel as a Jewish state. Why?
3. Will you stop using the humanitarian aid money given to you by the U.S. and the U.N. for prohibitedpurposes, such as paying salaries to and glorifying terrorists, and inciting mass hatred against Jews, even among Palestinian children?
4. Why did you not immediately fire Jibril Rajoub, the supposedly "moderate" senior PA official, after he said in May 2013 that if the PA had a nuclear bomb, it would drop it on Israel that very day?
5. Are you prepared to make any concessions to advance the peace process? For example, will you rescind your July 2013 statement that if you get your own state, not a single Jew will be allowed anywhere within it?
6. If you strike a deal for peace, how will you ensure that all Palestinian parties, both in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, uphold it; that the next president of the PA does not say, "Abbas signed that; I did not."?
7. If and when you get a Palestinian state, will you announce – in Arabic – that this agreement brings an end to the conflict?
8. And will you then formally order the PA to stop glorifying terrorists and calling for the destruction of Israel in the Palestinian media, school textbooks, summer camps, sports stadiums, crossword puzzles and other outlets?

Read the ENTIRE article here: